


Dead Girl Falling

by WonderstruckSwan



Category: Heathers: The Musical - Murphy & O'Keefe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Mentions of Suicide, So much angst, Toxic Relationship, follows canon up until meant to be yours so... yeah toxic canon jdonica, this ain't fluff if that's what you're looking for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-01
Updated: 2019-03-01
Packaged: 2019-11-07 18:29:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17965814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WonderstruckSwan/pseuds/WonderstruckSwan
Summary: Veronica finds a different way to put an end to JD's plan. A way she picked up from him...





	Dead Girl Falling

Veronica slams her bedroom door shut, her heart pounding a frantic rhythm against her ribs, her mother’s concerned cries beginning to calm down.

 _‘I know exactly what you’re going through,’_ she had said and Veronica nearly laughs. She doesn’t know what her world looks like, no one does. No one except her and the judgemental ghosts of Ram, Kurt and Heather Chandler, looking at her with narrowed eyes and feral grins as she looks around her bedroom for anything to use, to defend herself, to attack him with, she doesn’t know yet. By her guess, JD is right down her block. Five minutes from her house. Marching down the street with an untethered brain and a gun in his hand.

Five minutes to live, how should she spend them?

She looks over at her desk, covered with notes and flashcards and text book from a time when she thought her SATs were the most important thing in her life. She remembers telling JD when they were sitting on the wall outside the school one morning “if I don’t pass English, I’m dead” and he had laughed. At the time, she had loved his laugh, the way it sounded, the way it made her feel. Now, remembering it, she felt sick. She’ll never read the Bell Jar again.

Still, she sees a blank page and a pen and inspiration strikes. She grabs the notebook and pen off the desk and dives into her closet, locking the door behind her and turning on the light. It’s almost nothing, but it will work. It has to.

She closes her eyes and pictures JD’s writing. The sharpness of his ‘f’s and how tiny his ‘s’s are and how he never crosses his ‘I’s. It’s not easy, leaning on her knees under a nearly burnt-out bulb with her hand shaking as she scribbles, trying to form the words he’d say on the page, but she can’t stop. Even when she hears her window lock snap off, she keeps writing.

“Knock, knock,” he says. He almost sounds like he’s laughing. He’s so far from the boy she used to know, who was calm and collected, even when wrapping his arms around her with a gun in his hand after shooting down Kurt and Ram. She can only remember one time he’s ever sounded out of control; when he exploded after Kurt and Ram’s funeral, telling her about the evil fucks who made life unbearable. And even that pales in comparison to how he sounds now. “Sorry for coming in through the window, dreadful etiquette I know.” She keeps her mouth shut, pressing her back against the wood of her closet. Just keep writing, she tells herself. Just keep going. “Veronica, come on, I know you’re in here.”

She hears the tap of his knuckles against her closet door. No, not his knuckles. It’s too hard, metallic even.

“I can see the light on in there,” he taunts. The door handle rattles. “Open the door.”

“Why?” she asks, her voice small. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m here to tell you I forgive you,” he tells her. “Come on out and get dressed, you’re my date to the pep rally tonight.”

“Why?” she repeats. One syllable words might be all her fried brain can come up with right now.

“You know our classmates thought they were signing a petition. You should come out and see what they really signed,” he explains, his voice growing higher and higher and she hopes her parents can’t hear. She can’t drag anyone else into this mess. “After you chucked me out, I fell apart, Veronica. You should have seen me, screaming, crying, punching the wall. BAM!” On the other side of the door, his fist collides with the wall and she lets out a scream before clamping her hands over her mouth. “You should be dead for what you put me through.” Tears form in her eyes at how cold his voice sounds. She wants the boy who kissed every inch of her at 2am and told her how beautiful she is, the boy who told her he worshipped her, who fawned over her. But it’s the same boy who did all that. Just the side she never wanted to see. “But then I realised something… it hit me, you know? This wasn’t your fault. Nothing could ever be your fault, you’re too perfect for that. It’s them, those assholes. It’s our class, it’s our whole damn school. They’re the ones keeping us apart. Poisoning your mind, turning you away from me.” She hears him fall to his knees outside. “But it’s okay babe. I can fix you, set you free. Make everything the way it was.” His voice catches, and she wonders if he’s crying. “Make you love me again.”

“What?” she asks, so quietly she’s surprised if he even heard her. “What did they sign, JD?”

“A note,” he explains. “Listen, it’s good. ‘We the students of Westerburg High, will die. Our burnt bodies may finally get through to you. Your society churns out slaves and blanks, no thanks. Signed the students of Westerburg High. Goodbye’. Sounds good right?” As he reads, she tears her own note off the book, folds it as small as she can, and puts it in her bra. She hears him laughing breathlessly. “I built a bomb, Veronica. Went home and took a bunch of my dad’s explosives. Our school’s gonna be Vietnam, baby. Boom, boom, BOOM!” She can only imagine what he’s doing in her room. There’s three inches of wood between them but it feels like he’s punching her over and over. “Veronica, we can do it together. Remember what we said? We’ll burn it all down and plant our garden here, together. Veronica, I… I can’t do this alone. We started this together, we’ll end it together.” She wants to spit in his face. They didn’t start anything together except… well, they kind of did. She hears his ragged breathing. “We were meant to be together. I was meant to be yours and once we make them all go away, we can be together again. That’s what you wanted, right? To be with me?”

Not like this, JD. Not like this.

“Okay,” she whispers. “Okay. JD, I’m going to open the door.”

“You are?” he asks, hopeful and more than a little surprised

“Yeah.” She raises on her unsteady legs. Deep breath. “Just, stand back, please?”

“Sure, sure, anything.” She waits for a few seconds, slides the bolt open and takes a shaky step outside. JD is almost on the other side of the room, looking like a kid on Christmas morning when he sees her. Other than that he looks awful; his hair is completely dishevelled, like he’s ran his fingers through it, his eyes are red, his face is pale.  “Hi.”

“Hey.” He crosses over to her and she meets him halfway. He looks confused, unsure whether he shoulder be happy or sad. He caresses her face with one hand. She looks down and sees the gun in his other hand.

“I was never going to use it,” he promises.

“I know,” she says.

“What made you decide to come out?” he asks.

“I think… I think you’re right.” The words feel wrong in her mouth, but she forces them out anyway. “Everyone at school thinks you’re wrong for me. That you’ll hurt me. They just got me so confused.” She covers his hand on her face with hers and grabs his coat with the other. This shouldn’t feel wrong but it does. “They messed me up, put things in my head, they scared me. They made me forget everything about you.” He smiles as she talks, leaning into her touch. “You said you’d set me free? You’d put things right?”

“Of course I will,” he tells her, kissing her head. She wants to cry. Instead, she bats her eyes and smiles.

“Then let’s do it,” she says. “Make this whole town disappear.”

He laughs again and kisses her. She remembers at the beginning, when kissing him was like fire running through her veins, making her feel like she could do anything. She remembers when he kissed her after promising he’d change, slow and long and painful, tasting like tears and hope. Now all she feels is cold, dead weight on her lips.

She follows him out her window and down the drive, down the whole way to the school without question, letting him hold her hand and whisper to her that he loves her, all while the note crinkles against her chest and his gun sits in his pocket and a bomb in his backpack.

He takes Veronica down a back door into the boiler room. Having never been down there, she’s not sure what to expect, but it’s uncomfortably hot and the boiler looks ancient.

“Norwegian in the boiler room,” she mutters as he takes the bomb out of his bag and begins setting it up. It seems more complicated than she thought; coming in different parts he sticks together with a roll of duct tape.

“Well, my dad’s good for one thing,” he laughs as he keeps working. Veronica nods, her heart clenching in her chest. Above their heads, the rest of the students dance and cheer in blissful unawareness. Students who will be dead before they can sing the national anthem if she doesn’t act soon.

She looks back him JD. Sweat beads on his forehead, beginning to stick his dark curls to his head. She said it that first night they spent together and she meant it; he’s beautiful. Deceptively so. She leans against the wall, casting her mind back over everything. All the bad, Heather Chandler and Ram and Kurt and even what just went down in her bedroom, but also the good, the rush she felt when he’d hold her, how she cried against his chest after the three-way rumour was spread around the school, the sound of his laugh, them sitting together on his bed while he told her about his love for books, walking home from school together, their hands linked. A whole kaleidoscope passes in front of her eyes of the past month, half of it painful and ugly, half of it brilliant and spectacular.

She knows he could have been beautiful inside. She saw him be gentle and soft and kind with her. She wonders what would have happened if his mom had stuck around, if his dad was good. If she had met him before everyone convinced him life was war.

“Hey.” He stops his work and stands up. It’s only when he wipes away her tear she even realises she’s crying. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” she lies. “I just love you.” He smiles and presses a kiss to her knuckles. For a moment, she doesn’t see the God complex and the violence, the manipulation and the pleading. She just sees her boyfriend.

“I love you too.” He sits down and gets back to whatever he was doing. “I brought some marshmallows. I thought it would be fun to toast them together, you know? Should have brought some crackers too, could have made s’mores.”

She presses her shaking hand to her stomach as a wave of nausea takes over. It’s now or never.

“What was that?” she asks, looking down the hall.

“What was what?” he asks, looking up.

“You didn’t hear that?” she says, pushing herself off the wall. She wills her voice to stop shaking. “I think someone came down here.”

“No one ever comes down here,” he says, but he doesn’t sound sure. He gets up and pushes her against the wall. “Stay here, I’ll check it out.”

“No,” she protests, grabbing his arm. “You’ve got this to do. I’ll do it.”

“Are you sure?” he asks, rubbing his thumb along your cheekbone. “If someone is down here you can get hurt.”

“Then give me the gun,” she requests. He takes it out of his pocket and looks from it to her. “I know how to use it, you taught me. You’ve got work to do here, and I’ll protect you if I have to.” He nods slowly, handing it over to her. He pulls her in and kisses her forehead.

“Be careful,” he tells her. “Don’t get hurt.”

“I won’t.” She starts walking away from him and hears him kneeling down in front of the bomb. She walks slowly, thinking about everything they could have done. Everything they could have been. Everything he promised her.

Camping, lying on the grass and looking up at the stars. Playing poker under blankets next to a campfire. Him letting her drag him around stores for summer clothes. Him holding her close on prom night as they dance and feel like they’re the only two people in the world.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, so low he can’t even hear. What he does hear is her beginning to cry. Behind her, she hears him stand up.

“Veronica?” he asks.

It’s time. She turns to face him, looking straight at his concerned face.

“Veronica what’s wrong?” When he steps forward, she steps back. Her arm feels like lead, but she raises it anyway. “Veronica-”

The bullet hits him in the stomach. She finds something ironic in the look of betrayal on his face when she pulls the trigger. An angry read stain grows on his t-shirt, spreading out like tentacles across the fabric. Neither one of them move, not even when the gun clatters to the floor. He gaps like he’s only just felt the pain and touches his hand to his stomach, wincing.

“Nice shot,” he says before he hits the floor with a bang, waking her up.

“JD!” she says, kneeling beside him, shaking him, forcing him to stay with her. “Listen to me, it’s over. It’s over JD! Which wire do I pull? How do I turn it off? Damn it which one?”

“You… you don’t need to,” he says weakly. “I never got that far. I never got it started. It won’t go off, ever.” He coughs painfully. “Unless you want it to.”

She reaches into her bra and takes out the note she wrote earlier. She smooths it out and drops it beside him. He laughs again and it sets him off coughing.

“And here I had thought you lost your taste for taking suicides,” he jokes. He keeps looking up at the ceiling. Veronica tells herself she shouldn’t go near him, but her body doesn’t obey and she kneels beside him. She doesn’t have the guts to look at the wound but nor is she strong enough to look at his face. She places the gun in his right hand, wrapping his cold fingers around the metal. “So what did you write?”

“What?”

“Can I hear my dying words,” he asks. He nods weakly towards the note she wrote, groaning in pain. “My final statement? I hope you made me sound good.”

She nods and lifts the page. It’s hard to read with tears in her eyes and her hands shaking, but she tries.

“Dear World,” she starts. “You weren’t kind to me. You gave me a father who never learned to love and dragged me around from state to state like a dog on a leash. You never let me stay anywhere and plat roots. You never let me grow. I was here for seventeen years and all I learned was pain and violence and anger. You were a war I never agreed to fight. You weren’t too kind to my mother either. You are cold and unfair, you give free passes to people who cause pain and let them relish in it, while giving no help to people who get hurt. Year by year you damaged me and now it’s all too late. I’m far too damaged for you or anyone.”

“Damn,” he wheezes. “You made me sound real deep.” She laughs despite everything. She pauses and considers continuing.

“To Veronica,” she reads. “I’m sorry I was never the love you thought I was. I’m sorry that I couldn’t protect you enough. I wish we had met before. I hope you remember me. Yours, JD.” When she looks at him, his eyes are closed and she nearly panics until she sees his chest rising and falling and hears his strained breathing. She sits there in silence for a while, keeping her eyes on him, assuming him unconscious. “I love you. Damn it, after everything you did, I love you, and what kind of idiot does that make me?”

“I,” he wheezes and she jolts. He heard what she said. “I love you too… As much as I could have.”  She leans over him and touches his face. His skin is almost grey now. After what seems like forever, he opens his eyes. “I wanted the world to be right for you. I never wanted you to cry again.”

“I guess the irony isn’t lost on you,” she says. “After everything, you’re the one that made me cry.” He nods slowly, his eyes drifting shut again. He coughs painfully, struggling to breathe.

“That was nice, what you wrote,” he says. “Really. Especially that last part. People are gonna think I was deep. Special. Romantic, even. Some tragic anti-hero.” She nods, not bothering to wipe her tears. “I’m going to guess the similarity is incredible.”

“Yeah,” she answers, her throat tight. Part of her wants to shake him and make him hold on. Part of her wishes there had been another way.

“You need to stick around here now,” he says. “Make things better. Clean up the mess down here.” She doesn’t want to know what he means by that, but in her mind, she thinks she knows where to start. A red scrunchie that should be meaningless. She’ll make it meaningless. “I worship you.” He must be hanging on by a thread now. Nothing he’s saying is in any way coherent.

She remembers when he first said those words to her. In the back of her mind, a small alarm bell rang, but something else took over; something in the way he was looking at her, the way he was smiling. She wanted love and got worship. Be careful what you wish for Veronica.

“Our love is God,” he says. He frowns slightly, his body tensing. A whimper escapes his mouth and it hits her; as terrible as he is, as much pain as he’s caused to her and to the school, he’s seventeen. He’s scared “Our love is God.” He wheezes in and out. “Our love is God.” He coughs some more, blood escaping from the corners of his mouth. “Our love is God.”

“Say hi to God,” she replies.

JD lets out a final, long, pained breath. His hand goes limp, the gun rolling out of it. His head lolls to the side. When she touches his forehead, it feels like ice.

She pulls her knees against her chest. The pep rally is probably still going on upstairs, but she can’t hear it. She can’t hear anything.

Selfishly, she thinks about how people will see her now. Her image has changed a lot over the past weeks. First she was Veronica the nobody, the frumpy geek who didn’t fit in. Then she was Veronica the honorary Heather who dressed like hell on wheels and went to hot parties. Then she was both Veronica the ex-Heather and Veronica who was dating psycho trench coat kid.

Now she’ll be Veronica whose boyfriend killed himself. That’s a fun way to finish high school.

She looks up and sees the half-finished bomb still sitting on the floor.

Shit, she thinks. She gets up and stumbles her way over. She looks inside JD’s bag and finds it filled with packs of what she guesses are thermals, if she was judging by his dad’s methods. She wonders what his dad will do now. Will he show up to the funeral? Oh God, there’ll be a funeral. Will he care that his son died?

She decides she can worry about that later. She puts the unassembled bomb back in JD’s bag and takes it outside, throwing it in the dumpster, pushing it down below the rest of the garbage bags. It’ll end up in some landfill somewhere, buried under everyday trash like broken bikes and chip bags. Maybe some Slurpee cups.

It’s still not over. She’s got one more part to play.

She runs in through the front door of the school, nearly falling on her face, weak as her legs are. She stumbles through the hallway, her ears ringing, her stomach churning.

“Veronica!” Miss Fleming comes down the hallway. Veronica only imagine the sight she’s greeted with, her pale faced, tear soaked student stumbling through the hallway like a zombie. “Veronica are you all right?” She shakes her head silently.

“It’s JD,” she says flatly. “Jason Dean. He’s dead. He killed himself.”

He’s dead.

She finally allows herself to break. Allows herself to let grief catch up and take over her. Allows herself to cry.

The words echo through her mind “Jason Dean is dead”. She answers Miss Fleming’s questions without much thought. “I found him in the boiler room” “He called me to say goodbye” “I looked all over” “By the time I got there it was too late”. It’s amazing how easily lying comes to her now. She nods when Miss Fleming tells her how sorry she is and if she needs anything she’s here. She thanks her without thinking and excuses herself, running to the bathroom.

She finally empties her stomach into a toilet, not that it does much good. She feels hollowed out but at the same time too full, like she’ll burst.

She stumbles out of the cubicle and makes her way to the sink. God, she does look awful. Her face is chalk-white and tinted green, dark shadows under her red eyes, her hair is a mess, tear tracks and grime and sweat run over her face.

“You know, this could be beautiful,” Heather Chandler had said once. She doesn’t feel beautiful. She looks as messed up and exhausted and horrible as she feels.

“Veronica?” A familiar voice asks. It’s not like it used to be, but nothing could take away Martha Dunnstock’s heart.

“Hey,” she says weakly, turning to face her. She rides on a mobility scooter now, a cast on her left leg and right arm and although her sweater covers it, there’s a brace around her ribs.

And it’s all her fault.

She may as well have pushed her off that bridge herself, and why did she do it? To protect the boy who is lying cold in the boiler room.

“Martha I’m so sorry,” she sobs. “For everything, for writing that note, for not telling you, for letting Heather walk over me, for how I spoke to you.” Martha comes closer, tears in her eyes too. “I’m so sorry.”

“Thank you,” she says. Her hand reaches out and grasps Veronica’s. “And I forgive you.” Veronica knows she doesn’t deserve it, but she lets herself take it.

“I’ve missed you,” she confesses. “I should never have gone off with the Heathers in the first place.” They were never friends to her, not the way Martha is. Was. Except for maybe MacNamara.

“I missed you too,” she says. “Movie night was so dull without you.” She chews her lip anxiously. “Veronica… I’m sorry but I have to ask… is what they’re saying about JD true?” She nods, a fresh wave of tears coming over her. Martha’s mouth falls open. “I’m so sorry.” Martha pulls her into an awkward hug, but it’s the warmest, most beautiful kind of embrace she has felt and she melts into it.

“I gotta go,” she says after a long time. “But… are you free next weekend? Maybe we could pop some JiffyPop. Rent some new releases?”

“Yeah,” she answers, smiling weakly. “I’d like that.” Veronica smiles and leaves the bathroom, bracing the hallway. Students weave in and out, some too caught up in the latest gossip that’s no doubt spreading through the school to notice her. Some see her and stare, whispering in their groups. Some offer sad smiles.

“Isn’t she dating him?” she hears one say.

She pushes her way through the crowd until she finds who she’s looking for. A small, blonde girl with wide eyes in a cheerleader uniform and a sour looking girl with a red scrunchie.

“Where have you been?” MacNamara asked, throwing her arms around her. Veronica hugs back tightly, revelling in the comfort. “People are saying that JD… he didn’t, did he?” She can only nod. “Oh my God…” Veronica pushes MacNamara off her and marches up to Duke.

“You look like hell,” is all she says.

“I just got back,” she replies. She turns Duke around, ignoring her protests, and pulls the scrunchie off her.

“What are you doing?” Veronica kisses her cheek, leaving her speechless for the first time in a while. It’s not an unpleasant sight.

“Good news kids, war is over. New sheriff’s in town,” she says. “So hang up your weapons and start playing nice. Or whatever.” JD thought the only place Heathers and Marthas could get along was Heaven. Maybe he’ll be wrong about that. “Martha and I are doing a movie night next Saturday. If you want to come there’s room on my couch. BYOB. Bring your own blanket.”

“That sounds nice,” MacNamara says. She and Veronica share a heartfelt smile, while Duke looks on, her eyes conflicted.

“There’s room for you too, Heather,” she tells her. “Should you decide to come.”

She turns and walks off down the hall. Despite everything that’s happened in the past two hours, she feels a weight lift in her chest. She feels hope. She watches the social hierarchy of Westerburg fall in front of her and damn does it feel good.

Still, it’s not over. It won’t be for a long time.

She explains it to her parents. Explains that her “friend” JD killed himself. She lets them hug her and tell her how sorry they are and if she needs anything, they’re there for her. She stays in her room all weekend, re-reading her diary entries from the moment they met to the moment everything fell apart. Laughing at the funny parts, crying during everything else. She picks at the food her parents bring up for her. She lets them kiss her forehead. She sleeps two to three hours at a time, waking up with a start each time. Sometimes she dreams of JD and her in her bed, while he kisses her and tells her that she’s the most perfect thing he’s ever seen. Sometimes she dreams of them dancing, him spinning her around and making her breathless.

Sometimes she dreams of Kurt and Ram lying lifeless with bullet holes in their chests, of Heather Chandler coughing up drain cleaner, or Martha lying broken with empty eyes under a bridge, of the school gym going up in smoke while she watches safely in JD’s arms, of JD bleeding out on a boiler room floor.

She always wakes up screaming at those.

On Monday, there’s a special assembly held in memory of Jason Dean. His suicide note gets spread around the school like a shiny new toy. Everyone sees him in a new light, the tortured romantic hero whose heart had too much pain to bear.

She hides in the bathroom at lunch. She’s unable to eat anything, so she just sits there with her arms wrapped around herself, wanting to disappear. She listens to the girls outside; JD has become a topic of bathroom gossip now, Westerburg’s newest pin-up.

They call him Jason Dean now, which makes her stomach turn more than anything. He was never Jason to her. He hated it when people used that name for him. JD was what he called himself, and it suited him. Jason Dean is the tortured soul, the one who searched for friends in the pages of books, the perfect prince to Veronica’s princess, the boy taken too soon, the perfect image of a tragic teenager, the boy who hung out at the 7/11 to escape his sad home life and stare up at the stars. JD was angry and violent, smart, cynical but cunning. Too smart, too cunning. He was the one who used books to make himself more articulate, holding on to some degree of control. He was the one who deliberately gave himself brain freezes so he couldn’t feel anything. He was all the ugly, twisted parts that the town wanted to hide away under the image they had crafted.

 Jason Dean is the boy who was too beautiful to live. JD was the ticking time bomb that was bound to go off.

“Did you see what he wrote to her?” a girl says. “So romantic.”

“I wish I had a boyfriend like him,” her friend says.

 _No_ , Veronica thinks. _You really don’t_.

After school, she sits on one of the benches outside. It’s cold now and all she has on her is her flimsy blue blazer. She watches as her breath comes out in puffs of smoke then looks at her blank diary pages. After pages and pages of angry scrawling followed by short entries where she wallowed in misery and pity, she finds she can’t write anything. Her mind buzzes with thoughts she can’t seem to articulate any more.

 _Dear Diary_ , she writes.

What else is there for her to say that hasn’t been said already. She hates him? She misses him? She hates herself for letting this happen? She’s disgusted with the school for what they’re saying about him? How even people who never gave him a second glance are now half in love with him, waiting for their Jason Dean?

She clicks her pen closed and open, closed and open, closed and open. She’s poured out her heart and soul, her pain and anguish, rage and grief, and now what else is there to write?

Maybe the truth.

_Dear Diary,_

Maybe one day, she'll work out what the truth is.


End file.
